Chrome will soon alert you of memory hogging extensions

You’re running through your various tasks on your computer, you see a new extension or two available for Chrome, and you decide to install it. You do this again over time, and then you begin to notice something weird happening with Chrome. It’s slow, laggy, takes forever to do anything, and then you get so frustrated that you end up trying out a new browser. Or, if you’re using a Chromebook, you get so frustrated that you end up not using said Chromebook much anymore.

Well the awesome developers over at Chrome will soon be building in a way for Chrome to let you know what extensions are hogging the most memory. You may not even know that the extensions was the root cause, but 9 times out of 10, it is. Sure, Chrome is a memory hog as it is, but you shouldn’t have to get so frustrated with it that you turn to another browser. Well, these extensions, while helpful, are causing you more harm than good.

The official title of this alert via Chrome is “Extension Resource Usage“. This will tell you what extensions are stealing your juice, so that you can make a properly informed decision about what extensions you want to keep. In the past, to combat this problem, I’ve literally uninstalled every extension that I had, and began reinstalling only the essential ones. Sure it’s a tedious task, but it’s one that works nonetheless.

The Extension Resource Usage will let you know what extension specifically is causing the problem, allowing you to uninstall or delete whatever you need to. In addition to this warning, this alert tweak to Chrome will also prevent any of those pesky, over-complicated extensions from even being installed. Google has done this to hopefully ensure that developers don’t just “slap code together” and actually put some more refined work into their extensions.

Something else that isn’t quite known yet, is when the Extension Resource Usage alert will appear. Meaning, when you will receive the alert that a certain extension is using more resources than what has been predetermined, that it should. This will really come in handy, especially for those using older Chromebooks, but have noticed any type of frustrating lag or hiccups in their day to day usage.

Extension Resource Usage should be rolling out, if it hasn’t already, and it will definitely be interesting to see how this alert system speeds up your usage of Chrome or your Chromebook. Have you spotted the Extension Resource Usage alert in the wild yet? Let us know in the comments below.